Poll Did You Believe Your Abuse Was Normal?

[The Albatross]

No. I knew my childhood abuse wasn't normal and was wrong. Others though, family, school, friends & their parents looked the other way so that complicated things quite a bit.

 

[Ronin]

Parental - yes. (I believed it was normal but I didn't deserve it.)
Other people - no. (Didn't believe it was normal, but believed I deserved it / they know better in the circumstances.)
Partnerships - yes (Believed it was normal and deserved. Every single one of them.)

 

[whiteraven]

I always believed that the way we grew up was the way everybody did. And the way my father treated me was because I was bad. I mean, of course it was.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Normal and my fault. That's actually the entire base of my trauma. "God told me to because...[something my fault or "to love you"]. And I believed up to the point of normalicy actually saying outloud "you mean not everyone does this"? Which happened repetiviely up to the time of my current therapist which was said quite often in his office. It's odd how it all happens really.

 

[8888]

I was pretty young and I did think it was normal. My abuser was a priest and I think I thought this was normal behavior for priests. I say this because when my abuser died when I was 6 and I met a new priest my mom tells me I hid under a table and I didn't normally do that for other people. I mostly repressed the abuse and didn't blame myself growing up but I did for a little bit when I was first in therapy in my late teen years.

 

[Mushy]

As a child I thought that it was normal and it's what everyone went through. It wasn't until my early teens that I began to realize it was wrong and not normal.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

I thought the gut punches and name calling we're just normal boyhood behavior even D exposing himself. I didn't understand the sexual trauma to know better and since I was threatened with death I must have done something wrong.

 

[user27357]

My abuse wasn't sexual, just physical and mental in some pretty creative ways and by the old standby beatings and humiliation.

My stepmother came into my life at age 11 believing that she had entirely removed the devils influence from her thoughts and therefore every thought that crossed her mind was sent there straight from JC hisself. Too bad she thought about punishing me until I got out of her way so much. I know now that dad feared her too and his beating me almost gets a pass because if he hadn't he probably would have been divorced and sued by church supplied lawyers looking to get their cut of whatever they could get from him. They get it all anyway, the b outlived him.

Yeah I thought it was all my fault and it was normal, they cut me off from all of my old friends and sent me to a school run by their cult where most everyone I hung with was getting beaten pretty regularly too. Funny thing, they preached that sports were too violent and raised emotions to a level that threatened our spiritual well being, but working out on a 6th grader was OK and just part of being a good seventh-day adventist.

If there is a hell, it waits for them, not us.

 

[Freemartin]

I just thought that's what people are like. I didn't know there were things like attachment, comforting, sharing etc. Of course I had heard of them but I thought they were vastly overrated. The truth is, I hadn't really experienced them, only some really twisted substitutes.

 

[Tropical]

I was very young and I had nothing to compare the experience to. It felt normal to me until I began to notice that this wasn't happening to everyone else around me, or that I knew of. Why didn't anyone talk about it? Why are my friends being shown a different kind of love? That's when I began to realise that it was the complete opposite of normal.

 

[Changing4Best]

My physical and sexual abuse were repressed, so I did not know about them when I was being raised. However, verbal abuse was very present in our home and from a pretty young age, I was aware that other parents did not act like that and so I assumed it was wrong. I left my parents house at the age of 19, on the day I finished high school. I did not even stick around to get my diploma. I was "done" with receiving anger, swearing and put-downs!

 

[frogthroat]

My home life I thought was normal until I got older and realized most other people didn't live the way we did. The torture I knew was wrong but it was so traumatizing I didn't understand what it was supposed to be. Punishment? Sex? Now punishment, sex, and medical procedures are are lumped into one big category. Everything seemed like it could turn in a scary mean porno after that. It's definitely isolated me from other people almost completely.